Celebrity status: a national subculture names its drinking game after Scott Hahn

Steubenville, OH––A new, dangerous drinking game invented by Franciscan University of Steubenville sophomore Ben Johnson, known as Covenant, is sweeping Catholic universities. The game, which involves players reading any book ever published by Scott Hahn, and then taking a shot of whiskey or beer every time the word “covenant” is mentioned, is raising major concerns with university officials.

What originally started out as fun for some has now turned dangerous, officials are reporting, with one man listed in critical condition and at least 47 others being admitted to area hospitals for alcohol poisoning. Now health professionals are warning Catholics of the dangers of playing Covenant.

“This is one of, if not the most, lethal games I’ve ever come across,” said Dr. Candice Jarvis, medical adviser to the USCCB. “The thing about alcohol is that it affects your ability to recognize how many times Scott Hahn uses the word “covenant,” and it absolutely effects your ability to ask the question of whether or not there are any synonyms of the word he could be using. You go into the game thinking the word will be read two or three times, and next thing you know you’re on your 26th shot after just a few paragraphs. I’d even venture to say that it would be safer if students took a shot after every mention of the word ‘the.’”

Game creator Ben Johnson told EOTT this morning that the game is admittedly more dangerous and “way crazier” than the Rick Warren drinking game he played when he was an Evangelical. “In that game we’d chug Pepsi every time we came across the word ‘Purpose.’ The worst thing I ever witnessed playing that game was people getting major sugar highs.”

At press time, Scott Hahn has urged students to consider the potential “prophets and losses” of playing Covenant.

You know you've reached a level of celebrity worthy of stardom when a whole subculture begins naming drinking games after ya. Should I envy the man?

(1) I went to a franciscan university, the same one Thomas Merton attended, and I am not seeing an element of originality in anything Ben Johnson has "invented." Will this bounder next claim credit for "Thumper"?

(2) "Dr Candice Jarvis of the USCCB," who is sounding the alarm that drinking games threaten to become the next Black Plague sweeping "Catholic" college campuses, should relax and guzzle a few herself. After four years of carousing amongst the franciscans, I can attest that her dire warnings of the horrors of alcohol for college students are at least fifty years too late.

(3) Warnings about college drinking from the USCCB fall under the category of CYA bloviation. If colleges, Catholic or otherwise, were truly concerned about students drinking themselves into fatal oblivion, they would do something beside cluck uselessly over it -- they would reinstitute the time-honored principle of in loco parentis. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen. If you want your institute of higher education to be a financially solvent enterprise, if you want to be able to stock your faculty with big name educators, free access to the panoply of vice is a must. Besides, "we are all saints," and therefore enforcement of moral behavior is not only unnecessary, but something of an insult.

(4) This is actually a pretty good early test case for the V2 claim that "we are all saints" and should therefore embrace modern culture with love and confidence. With that "reasoning" in place, "in loco parentis" did not have a leg to stand on, and was gone with the wind even before I graduated. Modern Culture 1, Modern Catholic teaching 0.

Thanks for straightening us out, Jordanes551. You seem to have enjoyed the experience.

I was unfamiliar with EOTT. I stay away from most Catholic blogs, because, despite some solid exceptions (including RC), they tend to be top-heavy with neo-Cath boobishness. A quick look at EOTT reveals that it is yet another effort of today's Catholics to embrace the secular world with joy, confidence, and courage -- to say nothing of self-conscious mimickry of their secular ideal, The Onion.

As for my comments, I think they stand without need of correction for the most part. But I do apologize for leaving the impression that I thought the USCCB might actually be able to exercise some influence on the policies of "Catholic" universities. Such a thought would certainly be worthy of an incisive EOTT parody.